Water Service

Supplying water to 360,000 customers through 3 large & 6 smaller supply plants

Halifax Water operates three large state-of-the-art, ISO 14001 Certified, water supply plants and six modern smaller community supply plants to provide water to 360,000 customers throughout the Halifax Municipality.

Operators at all Halifax Water’s supply plants continuously monitor and adjust the treatment process to ensure the water output is of the highest possible quality.

Halifax Water has created this mapping application ‘Where Does My Water Come From’ to help residents determine which water supply plant supplies water to their homes. The ‘Where Does My Water Come From’ application will also give you information on the water supply plants such as:

Year of construction of the supply plant

Population served

Location

Water Source

Treatment Type

Water Quality

Providing the Halifax region with safe, reliable, and affordable high-quality drinking water requires investment in infrastructure, research, and robust quality assurance and quality control programs. In order to ensure quality control is optimized, Halifax Water maintains an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 Environmental Management System Registration at the J. Douglas Kline (Halifax), Lake Major (Dartmouth), and Bennery Lake (Halifax Airport) Water Supply plants.

Multiple-Barrier Approach

To ensure public health protection, Halifax Water uses what’s called a “multiple-barrier approach.” This is an integrated system that prevents or reduces the contamination of drinking water from the source, to the tap, and back to the source. It consists of a series of checks and balances as follows:

Source Water Protection

Halifax Water's Source Water Protection Program proactively prevents contaminants from entering the drinking water system. Keeping clean water clean is one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to ensure public health protection, and to maintain water resources both for people and the environment.

Optimization of Treatment Process

Halifax Water uses a Water Quality Master Plan as a roadmap for ensuring that the best quality water is provided to customers, that it exceeds regulatory requirements, and that it minimizes cost to the consumer. That plan is realized through plant optimization, internal water quality programs, and a research partnership with Dalhousie University.

Sound Distribution System Management

Halifax Water has a proactive Water Main Renewal and Rehabilitation Program to ensure the long-term integrity of the distribution system, reduce water wastage due to leakage, and improve flow capacity and water quality. This annual capital program provides for the replacement of approximately 2500m of structurally deficient and/or undersized pipe every year.

Cross Connection Control

Halifax Water has an active Cross Connection Control Program that minimizes the risk of contaminants entering the distribution system from customers’ premises through backflow prevention.

Continuous Monitoring and Testing

Halifax Water has a comprehensive water testing program. Bacteriological testing is done weekly at 51 locations within the Halifax urban core, and at each of the small systems in suburban/rural areas of the Halifax Regional Municipality.

Tests are carried out by an independent certified laboratory with results sent directly to NS Environment and Labour and the Nova Scotia Medical Officer of Health.

Testing includes:

Chlorine residual, pH, and turbidity of treated water leaving each plant as well as multiple locations within the plant, to monitor and optimize the treatment process

Quarterly sampling of treated water at 2–3 locations within the distribution system for approximately 40 chemical parameters

Quarterly sampling of raw lake water and water from contributing streams for approximately 40 chemical parameters

Bi-annual sampling of Lake Major and Pockwock Lake raw and treated water for all parameters in the Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality

Bi-annual testing and sampling for giardia and cryptosporidium for treated and raw water for all surface water systems

Water Treatment

Each water supply plant has varying types of treatment systems in place based on the source water quality. The varying treatments conducted at the plants include: